Brazil's Neymar, out of the World Cup with a cracked vertebra, received a measure of good news today: He is expected to recover fully by simply resting his back. But that is small consolation for a country still convulsing with dismay and anger since the 22-year-old attacker was carried from the field in agony during the last minutes of Brazil's win over Colombia on Friday.

Brazil's star player Neymar suffered a fractured vertebra in his lower back when Colombia's Juan Zúñiga struck him in the small of his back near the end of Friday's match. Brazil will move on to the semifinals of the World Cup next week without Neymar. Photo: Getty

"He can walk. There's no neurological damage. There is nothing that will cause problems for him in the future as a player or as a human being," team doctor Jose Luiz Runco told reporters at a news conference in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday. Dr. Runco confirmed that Neymar, who plays professionally for Barcelona, suffered a transverse fracture of the left side of the third lumbar vertebra.

Neymar left the team training facility in a helicopter on Saturday to begin his recovery at home on the Brazilian coast near São Paulo. He appeared shaken but upbeat in a short video statement released Saturday by Brazil's soccer federation.

Brazil's Neymar delivered a message to his fans by video, promising that although he will miss the World Cup semifinal due to an injury, the team will still be victorious. Photo/Video: AP/CBF

"My dream was to play in a World Cup final, that's not going to happen now," said Neymar, who was seated in the video and wearing a black T-shirt. "This Cup isn't over. I will do what I can so that Brazil is victorious in the final."

Neymar was injured in a collision with Colombia's Juan Zúñiga in the final minutes of Brazil's 2-1 win, when Zúñiga's charged Neymar from behind and his knee collided with the small of Neymar's back. Neymar collapsed to the ground in visible pain and was carried from the field in an orange stretcher.

Zúñiga has said he did not mean to injure Neymar. But Brazilian soccer officials are calling on the sport's organizing body FIFA to review the charge for possible disciplinary action in the same way Uruguayan player Luis Suárez's bite of an Italian player was reviewed earlier in the tournament. As with Suarez, Zúñiga did not receive a penalty for the collision during the game.

Dr. Runco said Neymar had lunch with teammates at the Rio de Janeiro training facility on Saturday and will now begin a weekslong process of recuperation. Television images showed him being loaded onto the chopper in a hospital gurney held down by blue straps for the flight home. Though on his back, Neymar appeared talkative and was wearing a black cap with his personal logo.

Depending on Neymar's pain level, he may be able attend the team's semifinal showdown with Germany set for July 8 in Belo Horizonte, Dr. Runco said.

Until he was knocked to the grass in the fading minutes of Brazil's 2-1 defeat of Colombia on Friday, the speedy, rail thin player had embodied the hopes of a nation seeking a second chance at winning the globe's once-every-four-year soccer championship at home. When he was still 19, the Brazilian news magazine put Neymar on its cover with a crown under the headline "Finally a star in the lineage of Pele."

His face is plastered all over billboards and magazine advertisements in Brazil. Many here believed they would see Neymar reach the finals and face long time South American rivals Argentina or the Netherlands, the team that knocked Brazil out of the World Cup in South Africa four years ago. Expectations had been so high that many Brazilian sportswriters have spent their time speculating on who Brazil will meet in the final—not whether they will get there.

Now, that story line has changed.

ENLARGE

Neymar lies on the pitch after injuring his back.
Zuma Press

It seemed on Saturday that no one in this nation of 190 million was talking about anything other than Neymar. Estado de S. Paulo newspaper ran a half page photo of a grimacing Neymar on his back in the orange stretcher that was used to carry him from the field.

On television, Brazilian musician Claudia Leite, who performed the World Cup theme song at the tournament opener in June, sang odes to Neymar. Brazilian fans attending the World Cup match between Argentina and Belgium chanted Neymar's name.

Confirmation that Neymar would miss the rest of the Cup came as an enormous blow to nation that moments earlier had been celebrating a key victory. In its defeat of Colombia the Seleção had finally found its groove after a series of unconvincing string of earlier World Cup games.

"We played the game beautifully, the way people like to see," said Seleção defender David Luiz minutes after the game. At the time, David Luiz predicted Neymar would recover.

But that prediction didn't come true.

"Oh, it is so sad, because he is really injured and, he was our hope, and now it will be harder for Brazil to win," said Monica Tavares, who was with her two young children in yellow Brazil jerseys in a small park in São Paulo on Saturday.

In Rio de Janeiro, news of Neymar's injury spread as hundreds of thousands of Brazilians were crowded onto Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach in wild celebration after the game Friday evening. Brazilians, some still in bathing suits after watching the match on giant screen over a section of the beach, drank beers, strolled in the crowds and danced in impromptu samba circles or to tunes blasting from giant speakers.

Then, word started to pass through the crowd and the rest of the city about the seriousness of Neymar's injury. The party began shifting gears to frantic speculation of what would come next.

Now, Brazil is limping toward a semifinal showdown with Germany next week. Brazil is also without Paris-St. Germain defender and team captain Thiago Silva, who has accumulated two yellow cards.

All the same, some here are seeking to find silver linings in the deep blow to Brazil's World Cup hopes.

One view is that Neymar's injury may actually free the national team from some of the overwhelming pressure to win that some analysts say has undermined its performance. Scenes of bawling players after Brazil's narrow defeat of Chile in the round-of-16 prompted questions about whether the Seleção was cracking under the pressure of seeking to win the Cup on their home turf. Brazil has won the World Cup more than any other nation. But more than these wins, it dwells on its infamous 1950 World Cup loss to Uruguay.

Brazilian players entered the Cup as home field favorites carrying national expectation that they would hoist the Cup and expunge the memory of the 1950 loss, still viewed here as one of Brazil's darkest moments, on or off the field.

But now, Brazil is suddenly an underdog freed of these pressures, writes Juca Kfouri, one of Brazil's top columnists, in Saturday's Folha de S. Paulo newspaper. "Without the Brazilian star and captain, the Germans aren't only favorites, but a shoo-in. And that's where the danger lies. For them. Free of the infamy, Brazil has become the underdog."

"If the team wins, it will be even more heroic. If it loses, there is a convincing excuse," wrote Tostao, a star on Brazil 1970 World Cup championship team in a separate article in Folha.

Indeed, some locals say they remain upbeat.

"There are young players that can be called onto the field, and who knows, they may surprise the world with their soccer," said Djalma Moreira, a janitor in a residential building in São Paulo.

The referee should be sanctioned for that game. By the time Neymar was injured it was clear he had lost control of the game and the players, particularly Colombian players, we're playing very roughly because they knew they could get away with it.

@XAVIER L SIMON At the 65 min. mark it was Brazil with 24 fouls vs. Colombia with 16. Additionally, there were at least three Brazilian fouls that should have been yellow cards. Colombia did not play as rough as Brazil until the final 20 min. when it became clear that the ref would not penalize Brazilians. At that point, the ref completely lost control of the match. The final foul count had Brazil up 11 fouls.

Best wishes to Neymar for a speedy recovery and a smooth and healthy return to the game. It was a sad coda to an otherwise ugly match.

As for the seleçao, I have every confidence that FIFA will assist them in their march to the World Cup Championship game. FIFA has invested too much in helping Brazil win up to this point to let it all slip away with Neymar's injury.

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